Barcode
by Shezzi
Summary: Just a little scribble that popped into my head. Kinda E/P.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Hey all, just something that was bouncing around in my head. I've never done a drabble before, it was challenging. 100 words exactly, surprise crossover. I might be induced to actually make this a story…if enough people ask. Read and review! love xx Shezzi

He said there was something wrong with her.

She guessed he was probably right. She hadn't exactly had what could be termed a 'normal' childhood.

She didn't know the social norms, never had the opportunity to learn as she bounced from home to home before finally fleeing the system.

But she wishes someone would think she was normal. She wishes HE thought she was normal. He was the strongest human she'd ever met, almost a match for her.

With a sigh, X5-439 grabbed her compact and checked that her barcode was properly covered before heading out to join her team.


	2. Wrong With Her

"There's something wrong with you," he growled.

Parker just shrugged slightly. She had stopped being afraid of death a long time ago; it had haunted her entire childhood from birth until the escape and afterwards when she was hiding, running, not drawing attention, living through things that no one should have to just to avoid being noticed. So death doesn't scare her, but not getting paid, that makes her mad. She needs the money, needs to be able to squirrel it away in her various escape funds, needs to know that she's got a secure exit strategy.

She hasn't seen anyone who knows what's wrong with her in almost fourteen years, since she and her sibs broke out of Manticore. They had split up into pairs, then her partner, her brother, got caught. She heard Bobby fall but didn't turn, didn't look, just kept ducking and running and weaving until she was out.

She knows that Lydecker still looks for them, and she keeps a low profile. She wishes she could use the name that her sibs gave her, but knows it isn't safe to do so. All it would take was one report of an incredible thief using that name and she'd be up to her neck in Manticore faster than she could blink. Still, she couldn't let it go completely, so Pan (short for Pandora) became Parker.

So when Eliot glared at her, she stared flatly back and forced herself to resist the urge to challenge his dominance, an urge that came from the small amount of wolf that Manticore had tried mixing into her and her sibs in an effort to balance out the cat DNA and make them work together as a team but still be capable of independent action as well.

"I take that personally!" she told him instead, thinking of all the things that were literally wrong with her body while this man picked on the one thing she didn't see as a problem.


	3. Flying

A/N: Okay, so to start off with we have some snippets giving us little hints here and there, and then we'll hit the main story. Chapters 8 & 9 will be the real starting point, before that it's just little hints that fitted well into the series as it stands. Thanks for reading, please review! love xx Shezzi

She reveled in the freefall, the moments before the rope caught her were the closest she came these days to truly letting her body do what it was designed for. That was why she couldn't hold herself back waiting for someone else's orders; she couldn't let anyone else control this part of her. They had won their own freedom, her and her sibs, and she would keep it. Even though it meant constantly being alone, something no transgenic was good at. They were designed to work in teams, particularly her family. Sure, they could work alone, but they also depended on each other, for strength and support and knowing that they had each others backs. Not having that those first few weeks in the outside world had been the hardest thing of all.

She heard Eliot's comment about her being 'twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag', and it actually made her laugh, although only internally. It reminded her of something Ben would say, or Max. She was always the biggest daredevil out of all of her sibs; Ben had been the storyteller, Max was their protector and Zack was their leader. She was just the one who loved a challenge, loved the adrenaline that came from danger, just not the kind of danger that every so often ended with dead family members, like the type Lydecker liked put them through.

For now, she felt the wind fly through her hair and remembered times when there was no harness, no safety net to detract from the thrill, although the buildings weren't as high as this one. At this height, gravity still ruled the world and she would ultimately go splat.


	4. Horses

Something in her DNA has always disliked horses. She thinks it might be the wolf in her, but she doesn't know for sure. They scare her in a way that nothing else does, not even Lydecker. But when Eliot asks her to do it for him, she can't bring herself to say no and into the air ducts she goes, although she isn't able to tamp down her nerves enough to keep quiet.

When he growls that they can still her, she wants to scream, but she presses her lips together and drops down into the supposedly empty room, only to be confronted by one damn big race horse, who snorts his surprise at her sudden appearance.

She freezes in place. The animal in her is sure she is about to get trampled to death, and the human is fairly certain that that will be the likely outcome as well, but when the horse makes no move towards her, she manages to relax slightly.

Soon enough she's at the door, letting them in, and forces herself not to hurt Eliot when he complains about how long she took. He has no idea how close he came to finding a very, very dead Kentucky Thunder in that stall.


	5. Movement

She watches the way he moves, carefully controlling himself at all times, even when he fights, and she realizes he is like her. Like her, he knows the power he has in his body and respects it. She likes to watch him fight, likes to see that raw power turned into something beautiful and graceful (at least to her, but as he's told her multiple times now, something's wrong with her.)

She wishes she could try herself against him, but knows he would never go for it, not unless he knew the truth about her. He'd be too afraid of hurting her, and he has this obsession with taking care of the team, which lately she's felt has been concentrated more on her than on anyone else. He would never risk hurting her.

So she settles for traveling way over the other side of the city to a gym and spars for hours on end a couple of times a week. It takes the edge off, but that's about all.


	6. Conspiracy

When Hardison and Eliot catch her using the office computers to search for any signs of her sibs, or of Manticore catching up to her, the hacker gives her no end of grief about how there are much more believable conspiracy theories out there and why on earth would she look into such a load of tripe?

She resists the urge to rip his head off, barely. She smiles and says something crazy and they forget about it.

She sighs with frustration. She knows that, really, not finding any signs of her sibs is a good thing but she wishes that just once she could see one of them. Any of them. She wants her family.


	7. Family

When Hardison tells her that they're more than a team, she almost bolts then and there. Even being on a team after all this time is difficult, but the idea of having another family, another group of people that she could potentially lose, that was worse.

But then they come and help her when she is getting those kids out of a place that reminds her so much of Manticore that she can barely keep it together, and she realizes that it's too late to run, that if she does she'll just be causing exactly what she's afraid of – the loss of her family. So when he says again that they're a team, she takes it a step further and repeats his own words back to him.

"We're a little more than that."


	8. Heat

When she doesn't come into the office for two days, and seems to be ignoring her phone, it's Eliot who comes to her door. He pounds against the fragile wooden barrier, determined one way or another to get inside and check that she is okay.

She hears him from her bed, and a shuddering rush of desire runs through her body like an electrical current. She wants him, her equal, not any other man, just him. Never before has her 'heat' been so utterly focused on a single individual. Normally, for these three one week periods of the year, she's able to go out and hook up with just random guys to scratch her intense itch, but this time no one will do but him, and she can't go to him like this.

Now he's at her door, bashing away at the wood as though he's going to take it out with his fist.

She pushes up off the bed and stalks across the apartment.

"What do you want, Eliot?" she demands, not opening the door.

"Open up, Parker. What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I've just got the flu," the blonde replied, then winces, knowing it was exactly the wrong thing to say.

"Are you alright? Let me in, I need to see you," he demanded.

It's hard enough with him on that side of the door, she can't handle him being on this side. But she knows he won't go away, so she opens the door as far as her security chain, the last and least of her many security features, will allow.

Everything inside of her screams for him to drag him into the apartment and onto her bed, RIGHT NOW, but she refuses. Refuses to do that to herself, and more importantly refuses to do it to him. She likes him, a fact that at the moment she is painfully aware of. And he's been trying to get her attention for the last thirty seconds and now he's freaking out.

"Parker. PARKER!" he gets his hand through the door and snaps his fingers in front of her face. She flinches back from them, because all she wants to do is bite. "Let me in," he demanded, and she shook her head, backing further away as he attempted to feel her forehead to gauge her temperature.

"Just leave, Eliot. I'll be fine. LEAVE!" she screamed at him when he looked like he was going to come through the door anyway.

Eliot flinched at her reaction, then his arm dropped back to his side. "Fine," he snapped, angry. "Don't come crying to me when you can't even make it out of bed and you need medicine." He turned and stormed away.

Parker, as she closed the door, felt fear stir in her gut. She was terrified that she had just damaged their relationship beyond repair. She knows the hitter shows he cares by taking care of them, and that rejecting that care meant rejecting him, but she couldn't help herself.

The fear holds sway for several hours, until she hears a brief knock at her door. She looks at her monitor, which shows Eliot heading away down the corridor. She waits until she's sure he's gone, then opens the door. There's a basket with a large plastic container, several packets of crackers, some pills and a bottle of milk.

She brings it inside and finds a note tucked into the bottom.

'Parker. I understand wanting to take care of yourself, particularly for people like us. We aren't used to trusting others. I wish you could trust me, but I understand why you won't. Just take care of yourself, please? Fortune cookies are not a balanced diet. And boil the soup before you eat it, it's real chicken broth. Eliot.'

She breathed a sigh of relief, and lifted the large container of soup out of the basket, placing it in the fridge with a small smile. He wasn't mad at her.


	9. Discovery

It's Eliot who comes looking for her when she doesn't show up for breakfast, a meal they had taken to sharing as the earliest risers on the team. They've been on this job two weeks longer than Nate predicted, and she's in trouble.

He finds her on her bathroom floor, shaking and covered in sweat, seizures wracking her small frame. She had run out of tryptophan the day before, they were out working the entire day, and the seizures hit before the drug store opened.

"Parker!" the hitter fell to his knees beside her, one arm wrapping around her shoulders to support her, the other going to her head to check for a temperature. "What's wrong, darlin'?"

"Milk," she managed to grit out without biting her tongue.

"What?" he demanded, decidedly confused. "Milk?"

"Yes," she replied through gritted teeth. "Get milk."

Rather than leave her in the bathroom, Eliot picked her up and carried her into her small motel room, placing her on the bed, where she curled onto her side clutching a pillow, before going to the minibar.

"There's no milk here," he declared, turning back to her, and she rolled her eyes. at him. If it was that easy, didn't he think she would've done it?

"I…know that. Go…get…milk," she ordered, her body bucking on the bed completely out of her control.

"Parker, darlin', I think you need a doctor, not a glass of milk," Eliot told her gently as he grabbed his phone.

"No…doctors. Too dangerous," she told him, trying to shake her head but unsure as to whether or not she managed the action.

"Parker, this is no time to be worrying about the con," Eliot told her as he started to dial.

Parker lashed out, managing to hit his phone and send it straight upwards, where it hit the room with a loud crack, before falling to the floor, its screen dark.

"PARKER!" yelled Eliot. "I'm tryin' to help here, darlin'," he informed her.

"Milk…helps. Doctor…dangerous," she told him, scowling. "I'll…explain later. Just…get me some milk, at…least two pints."

"There better be a damn good explanation for this, Parker," the hitter growled before running from her hotel room. He didn't know why he wasn't already on his coms to the rest of the team, getting them mobilized to help, but there was something in Parker's eyes that stopped him, a fear and a vulnerability that he had never seen there before.

So instead he ran down to the small café just outside the motel and, yanking open their fridge, grabs a couple of pints of milk. He slapped a bill down on the counter, fairly sure he just paid for four times what he took, and ran back out, dodging a woman coming in the door.

Back in Parker's room, he ends up sitting with her between his legs, leaning against his chest as he helps to drink straight from the bottle. She swallows the milk in gulps and sips, whatever her body will allow, not caring when it spills down her chin to stain her already soaked tank top.

He doesn't really expect the milk to help, but within five minutes he can see that something is changing. The seizures aren't stopping, but they're growing smaller. Another five minutes and she lies panting in his arms, occasional tremors shaking her frame. She's consumed the entire two pints of milk, except for what she's wearing instead.

She pushes off him and then shifts out of his lap, turning to face him on the bed, hugging a pillow to keep her body more or less upright.

"Explain," ordered Eliot.

"I…this is really complicated," Parker said, glancing away from him. "I…my brain doesn't produce serotonin. Levels fall too low, I start seizing. The tryptophan in the milk supplements the serotonin and stops the seizures. Mostly."

"Alright, that explains the seizures and the milk but not the doctor. What else?"

"I…I never told anyone about this before," Parker admitted, her eyes now glued on the bedspread, her hands fisted so tight into the pillow that her knuckles stand out stark white against her skin.

"It's alright," Eliot said softly. "Take your time."

She knows she needs to get this over with, because soon the milk will wear off. It's a low-tech solution, and the dosage it provides isn't enough to last for long.

"You're gonna think this is nuts," she told him, "but I can prove it, at least most of it. But first, you can't say anything about this to ANYONE, do you understand? Not even the team."

Eliot realised what it meant that she'd never told anyone whatever it was she was about to tell him. It meant that no one had ever had the level of trust with her that he did, because he knew without a shadow of a doubt that if she didn't trust him, it wouldn't matter how many explanations he demanded, she still wouldn't answer.

"I swear on my nephew's life," he promised, and she nodded once.

"I actually have family somewhere, you know?" she said first. "Brothers, sisters. Not fosters, real family. No parents, though. Or I guess maybe the problem is actually too many parents. No idea who they are though. The best of the best of the best, sir! That's what they're supposed to be. Geniuses, athletes, specialist soldiers. Well, that, and a couple cats, a wolf, shark and I'm pretty sure they threw in some eagle just for fun, and you know, long distance vision."

"Parker!" snapped Eliot, completely lost. "You aren't making any sense, girl. Slow down and tell it from the beginning."

"From the beginning, huh? Okay," she replied, shifting again so she was sitting beside him on the bed. She shivered, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her against his side, and she snuggled into the warmth his body offered.

"Once upon a time there was a girl named Pan," she began. "Well, really she was named Pandora, but that was just way too long and difficult when you were in a hurry, so she was called Pan. Pan lived with her brothers and sisters in a secret military base called Manticore from the day she was born, the day all of them were born. They had no real mothers, just surrogates used to carry them to term, and their DNA was such a mess that you couldn't have told who their 'parents' actually were. You see, Pan and her sibs were made, not conceived. They had DNA from a number of people, military, physical and scientific geniuses, and a variety of animals that gave them incredible abilities, strength, speed, flexibility and more. For twelve years they lived and trained there under brutal conditions. Not all of them survived. When they escaped, not all of them made it out. They split into pairs. Pan went with her brother Bobby, but he got taken down before they got out. Once she was out, Pan set about hiding. For a while she lived on the streets, getting as far across the country as she could, but eventually she got picked up by social services and ended up in the system. She bounced from home to home until she was about sixteen, she thinks, and then she split. She became someone else, someone other than who Manticore and the system made her into, someone no one knew about, who no one could hurt. She became Parker. But, see, the problem is that because they were made, Pan and her sibs weren't perfect. Someone along the line someone screwed up, and they ended up with certain…difficulties. The chief one being that their bodies don't produce serotonin, so they have to get it other ways. And the girls that were lucky enough to get cat DNA literally go into heat three times a year."

Eliot blinked. This was a lot to swallow, but it was Parker and she didn't just say things to say things. She certainly wasn't going to come up with a story this outlandish on her own, and she'd said she could prove it.

"The only thing I've got that connects me openly to Manticore is this," Parker told him, bending her head forward and sweeping her sweat soaked hair off the back of her neck.

Eliot froze, eyes widening, as he stared. There was a barcode tattooed on the back of her neck, like she was…like she was a piece of property. It set a fire burning in his belly as he stared at it, raising one hand to trace over it.

"If that's all that visibly marks you, why not just get rid of it?" he asked curiously, but Parker shook her head.

"I tried that once. It felt like they were pouring acid on my skin, and it was back within a week. It's not a tattoo, it's programmed into my genetic code. To them, that string of numbers is all I am. X5 series number 439. Not Parker, not even Pan. I was only Pan to my sibs."

Eliot closed his eyes in horror at what she was describing. He'd heard of the government doing some terrible things, but this was beyond the pale.

"I need to shower and get to the drug store before the milk wears off," Parker told him, and he nodded. "That means you need to let go, Eliot," she prompted, and he started at the reminder before raising his arm and letting her crawl out from underneath. "I'll be five minutes."

"Okay, darlin'. I'll be here."

Five minutes later, Parker emerged from the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel, another wrapped around her body. Eliot immediately looked away, staring at the wall as she crossed to her suitcase and grabbed some clothes, dressing as fast as her shaky hands would allow.

"Let's go. The others'll be up soon," she said, turning back to him, completely unashamed, as she pulled off the towel that had been holding her hair. "Oh, one second," she shook her head as she realised what she'd almost done, and grabbed her compact, but her hands were shaking too badly for her to do what she needed. "Do you mind?" she asked, holding it out to Eliot and pulling her damp hair away from her neck. "Just smooth it over, it should cover it completely," she instructed.

Eliot quickly covered the barcode, and they headed out of the room, Eliot wrapping an arm around Parker's waist when she stumbled, pulling her against his side. "Come on, darlin', lets get you what you need."

They headed out of the motel and to the nearby drug store.

"What exactly are we looking for?" he asked, glancing around the not particularly well-stocked store.

"Tryptophan. It should be with the dietary supplements; I hope it's with the dietary supplements," she muttered under her breath, but he still heard her.

They crossed quickly to the small section of shelves that held the vitamins and dietary supplements, Parker's eyes darting anxiously across them as she tried to see what she needed. Finally her eyes landed on a white plastic bottle, and she grabbed it off the shelf with shaking hands.

Eliot glanced at the shelf, scowling when he saw there was only one bottle there; he'd wanted to get more, to make sure that she didn't run out again any time too soon. "Will that be enough?" he asked, concerned.

"I don't know," she admitted softly as they headed to the counter. "If we have to stay here much longer, I don't think so. I haven't had a really bad patch like this since before we got together as a team. When it's like this it never goes away completely, it just eases off enough that I can more or less function. I have to sleep more and dose myself almost constantly. If we're here for more than another couple of days, I'll run out again."

Eliot handed the bottle over to the girl at the counter. "How long will it take for you to get more of that in?" he asked as he handed over a bill, ignoring Parker's attempt to pay.

"At least a week," the girl replied, not glancing up from her computer monitor.

"Is there another store in town where we might be able to find it?"

"We're the only pharmacy in town," she replied, still not looking up from the computer. "Sorry."

Eliot growled in his throat at her lack of manners before helping Parker out of the store. Once they were outside, she grabbed the bottle with shaking hands and was trying to get the lid off. Eliot let her try for a minute, then took it back gently and opened it himself. "How many?" he asked softly.

"Three," she replied, and he tipped them into his palm before handing them over. She tossed them back all at once, dry, and swallowed.

"Okay?" he asked softly, and she nodded tiredly. "Breakfast?" he asked then, bringing them back to the thing that had started all of this in the first place, his words a soft reminder of his promise to keep her secret and help keep her safe.


	10. Terror

Parker nearly freaked at the words that Hardison had just uttered. A Facebook page. Photos of her on the Internet. All it would take was one shot, one that caught her in the wrong light, one that looked even remotely like what the photo recognition software aged photo that Manticore would be constantly running of her and she was screwed. Granted, she wasn't a natural blonde, her eyes weren't naturally blue, but she was still clearly identifiable through face-matching software.

She clamped down on her emotions, forcing herself to remain calm and breath evenly, even as Nate told her firmly that she had to go to an event where it was entirely possible her 'secret' identity had been breached, where Manticore could be waiting.

She wanted to just run. This is what she'd been afraid of, working with a team, forming a family – people who didn't know better who could blow her cover.

It was over half an hour before she could get Eliot alone.

"I can't do this, Eliot," she paced frantically in his office. He was still pissed about her stunt with the elevator, but what none of them knew was that if she hadn't done what she did things would have been much worse. No one was dead, and they all got out, so it was a win in her book. She couldn't actually explain it, even Eliot didn't quite understand the scope of her ability to calculate angles and odds, not to mention see microscopic faults that could be potentially life threatening.

"Yes, you can, Parker. It's just for a little while, you just have to pretend for a little while…"

"NO, you don't understand. I represent a billion dollar investment for the United States government. Do you think they've ever stopped looking for me? Really? And Hardison…Alice White has a frickin' Facebook page! They might know who she is!" She paused for a moment, then gave a half amused chuckle. "Huh…never thought about it like that before. I am actually the first and most expensive thing I have ever stolen…"

Eliot gave a half smile at that before turning back to the more serious topic at hand. "Is it really that big of a risk? I mean, your photo must have gotten out before…"

"I've never gotten caught, Eliot. It's always been crappy surveillance photos. But this is Hardison, do you think he'd settle for that?"

With a bad feeling, Eliot sat at his computer and quickly pulled up Facebook, then ran a search for Alice White.

Parker gave a slightly pained, fearful moan at the clarity and quantity of the photos on the account. "Lydecker…He's going to find me…" she seemed to curl in on herself, looking younger and more fearful than Eliot could ever remember seeing her. In fact, he couldn't remember ever seeing her this afraid.

"Hey, hey, it's alright, darlin'. I'm not gonna let anyone get to you, I promise. " He wrapped his arms tightly around her shoulders, rubbing her back, trying to help her relax.

"You don't understand, Eliot. There's nothing you can do, nothing anyone fully human can do if they come after me. The people Lydecker will most likely send after me…they're just like me. Stronger, faster…more."

Eliot scowled at the idea that he couldn't keep her safe, but considering that she'd taken him out, even if it had taken a reasonable effort, and had acknowledged that he was the toughest human she'd ever faced, he couldn't deny that she was right. When she had told him she wasn't even one of the direct combat units, designed instead for infiltration and assassination, he had known he was completely out of his depth.

"Who is Lydecker?" he asked instead, and saw her flinch, her eyes full of fear.

"He was…our trainer," she said, the words almost silent, forced past the lump in her throat at a volume Eliot only picked up because she was pressed against his chest close enough it was as if she was trying to merge with him. "He was…everything. Controlled us totally. We couldn't do anything without his say-so." She shivered violently in Eliot's grip, and he wrapped his arms more firmly around her. She buried her head against his chest and he heard a soft whimper, and felt growing damp on his shirt.

"You don't understand, Eliot. I didn't…I didn't do what I did today because I'm stupid, or insensitive, or inhuman…I did it because it was the only way to not get you all potentially dead! And now, in payment, I get to go and be a sitting duck for the man who killed several of my sibs in horrific 'training accidents', who tortured us mentally and physically, a man who has hunted me since I was twelve, and ruled my life until that time with an iron fist and…" her words ended in a muted wail as she once more buried her face against his chest, shaking in fear and grief.

Eliot just held her, not sure how to respond to the whole situation so doing the only thing he could right now, being there. She wasn't willing to tell the others, had resisted every time he'd brought up the idea, and he doubted that that had changed now.

He started to hum, stroking her hair until she finally calmed. "Now, let's go talk to Hardison about why we don't put photos of wanted criminals on the internet, okay?"

Parker nodded, grabbing a tissue off Eliot's desk and wiping her face before blowing her nose and dropping it into the bin. They made their way out of Eliot's office together and found the tech geek in his office.

"Hardison," Eliot growled. "Parker and I need to talk to you."

"What you all upset about?" Hardison asked, glancing from one to the other in concern.

"Photos," Eliot growled. "You set up a facebook page in Parker's alias's name. Didn't it ever occur to you that if anyone had a PICTURE of Parker they could track her down if she ever went out in public under that alias?"

Hardison's mouth opened and closed as he tried to come up with a response to Eliot's question. "You all are just bein' paranoid!" he finally burst out.

Parker gave vent to a soft but clearly enraged scream. "Take it down. Take it all down. Any photo you have put of me, anywhere, I want it gone! NOW!"

"That goes for me too, Hardison. They'd better be gone in an hour, or your dolls are going to pay for it," Eliot told him, nodding significantly at the shelf of original action figures Hardison had on the wall of his office.

"Now, those are an important part of your covers," Hardison objected, and Eliot actually snarled, but it was Parker's reaction that really startled Hardison. She jumped across his desk, no part of her actually touching it, from a standing position and landed with her feet on either side of his legs on his chair, her hands on either side of his head, in a position that could have been decidedly sexy if it wasn't for the expression on her tear swollen face.

"They are not ANY part of my cover," she hissed. "It goes. Or I am gone. You won't see me again. And you'll never find me." She jumped backwards and fetched up standing in front of him, between his desk and his chair.

"Dude, you don't do the things we've done without having some fairly serious people looking for you," Eliot spoke up, even as he came round the desk and put a hand on Parker's shoulder. "So get rid of them, or we're both gone." He used the hand on Parker's shoulder to gently guide her out of the room and down the hall, rubbing his thumb into the tense muscles next to her shoulder blade as he did so. He brought her back to his office and sat down on his couch, pulling her down beside him and wrapping an arm around her.

"I can't do the jury duty, Eliot, I can't," she whispered, pressing against him.

Eliot cupped her cheek in his free hand and tipped her head back, bringing her eyes up to meet his. "Darlin', I hate to say it, but the only way you'll get out of it is if you tell them the whole truth," he told her gently. "

"I can't!" she insisted, eyes wide. "I just…I can't!"

Eliot nodded and pulled her against him, holding her as she shook and shivered. "It's alright, darlin', it's alright. I've got you," he whispered. "If that's the way it is, we got to do this, darlin'. We have to make this work. I'll be there, everyday. And while you think he'll send people like you, I think it's much more likely he'd send ordinary soldiers, less likely to draw massive amounts of attention. Between the two of us, we can take whatever comes."

"It…it's not just about me, Eliot. The potential for collateral damage is enormous, and if…if they identify any of you as close associates, they'll come after you to get to me. And none of you are as off radar as I am, well, maybe you are, but the rest of them aren't. They're known; they're good at not being noticed, but they are well known. I can't…this is the first…I won't lose my family again, I won't!" Parker took off running then, at faster than human speeds, before Eliot could catch hold of her.

He turned his head, listening, but got no hints of where she was. He couldn't even call her over the comms because the others would be privy to the conversation, and it wasn't one they could have in public. He hurt for her, his heart aching as his ears still rang with the raw pain of her last sentence. 'I won't lose my family again!' He was blessed with his family. His parents were both passed, his father long before his time and leaving his family exposed to things that led to who he was now, but his twin brother had two kids, a girl and a boy, who he saw whenever he could find the time, and they were all close. He knew that they were safe, and he kept it that way by keeping their relationship under the radar. But all Parker had was them, as far as he knew, anyway, and they weren't exactly under the radar.

They had brought Parker into something she hadn't had since she was twelve and she and her siblings ran. A team that became more than that, that became family. He didn't know for sure, but he was fairly sure that there had been someone in the intervening years, someone who took her under their wing. She would have needed it; coming from a rigidly controlled, harsh environment she would have needed someone, some kind of structure. Still, she hadn't had family again, not really, until they'd been brought together to work that one job, and never left.

The thought of losing them must, he knew, terrify her. It would be like him thinking about anything happening to his remaining family, and the mere idea of that caused his gut to clench in undeniable fear. He could only imagine that with her past experience, and the fact that she just didn't deal well with emotion in general, it would be much worse for Parker.

"Eliot, where's Parker?" demanded Nate suddenly, and Eliot paused, trying to decide what to do. He wanted to snap and snarl at Nate, who had put them in this decision, but at the same time, it was kind of Parker's fault. What she had done with the elevator had seemed incredibly reckless, sending them plummeting down the building at a rate that was only stopped by the emergency brakes, which she was also responsible for triggering. He didn't know what she had seen that had told her that they were in danger, but he did believe her when she said that it saved their lives. She couldn't bring herself to trust anyone with her secret. He knew, because she had told him, that he was the only one she had ever told. She would never forgive him if he betrayed that trust, but he couldn't see any way for this to end well without the rest of the team being informed.

"I'm just on my way to find her," he told the mastermind, and continued on before the mostly inebriated man could stop him. And when he found her…he would figure it out then.

It took most of the night, but he finally found her in one of her favourite places, the roof of a building not quite the tallest in Los Angeles, but close.

"Parker," he said softly. He knew she knew he was there, but he still liked to give verbal acknowledgement before invading her, admittedly large, space bubble. Parker's bubble was odd; at times, often annoying times, completely non-existent, and at others so huge it seemed to take up most of the enormous roof the two were currently sharing. Parker was sitting, arms wrapped around her knees, staring out at the city below, just watching life pass by.

She turned her head towards him slightly, acknowledging his presence, and he felt it was safe to approach. He sat down beside her and waited, silently, for her to speak.

"Max and I always loved heights the most," she whispered finally. "We were both infiltration units, cat and eagle and shark DNA, that I know of. We were complete opposites – dark to light – physically, and she was bigger than me, a couple of inches. She was my best friend, my sister. And I don't know if she's dead or alive, if she's free or not, and I hate it." Her voice caught in her throat, and Eliot glanced over, shocked, to see tears glittering in her eyes. "I almost ran, when Hardison said we were more than a team. I couldn't bear the thought of getting that close to anyone again, but…I was too late. We weren't made to be alone; they included enough wolf DNA to make sure of that. We crave a pack around us; I was able to lone wolf it for a long time, but by the time I realized what was happening with the team it was too late and I couldn't leave and…"

"Parker," Eliot interrupted softly, laying a gentle finger against her lips to stop her desperate babbling. "It's alright, darlin'. And, for what it's worth, I don't think they've found that Facebook page, because if they had they would have already turned up looking for the person who posted it, wouldn't they? And it's down now, and I'll make Hardison check for any other pictures and take them down too. I promise you, darlin', it's gonna be alright. But if you aren't gonna tell'em the truth, you're gonna have to go through with this trial, you know that, right? I'll be there, every day, I'll take care of you, I promise."

Parker snorted lightly at the idea of Eliot taking care of her, like he could, but it still warmed her that he wanted to, that even knowing what she was he still wanted to be there for her.

"Thank you," she whispered, shivering, and shifted towards Eliot to steal his body heat, a thought he thwarted by giving it freely, wrapping an arm around her once she was close enough. He waited until she was ready, then led the way down from the roof – by the stairs – and away.


	11. Sorrow

A/N: So we've gone back in time a little from our last entry, but hopefully it won't be confusing. Alternately you can just consider that the episodes happened in different order. Enjoy! Shezzi

Parker froze stock still for a long moment as her eyes locked onto the key detail in the photograph she was staring at. It was tiny; so tiny. Just a sharp, dark corner that could be seen where a head was turned and hair and fallen apart, but it was there - a barcode. She couldn't identify the face, but one her sisters was in this photo, a smile stretching her face, her eyes laughing as she turned slightly towards one of the others. Parker stared, hungrily, eyes devouring every detail as she tried to take it all in. It was the first time she'd seen one of her sibs in so many years, and her heart ached as she stared at it, feeling an odd burning in her eyes that, after several long moments, she identified as tears.

She tried to turn away, to turn her back, but she couldn't. Her eyes clung to every detail of that tiny face, trying to pick out if that was Max's nose, or Kanga's eyes, even as tears slowly, silently, traced their way down her cheeks. The photo was a couple of years old, the small group of teens with a couple of adults all with their arms around each other, skis stuck upright in the snow behind them and ecstatic grins on their faces, eyes alight with pleasure. She wanted that picture, wanted it badly, but there wasn't time now. She was meant to be heading out to check the ski lift she'd be having an accident on tomorrow, and it would be closing soon. She knew that, but she just couldn't make her feet move.

"Parker?" the gentle query was accompanied by a hand to her shoulder, and she flinched away, suddenly freed from her paralysis, hands swiping at her cheeks in too fast for the (unenhanced) human eye to follow.

"What?" she snarled at the dark skinned hacker, who quickly withdrew his hand hurriedly.

"You alright, girl?" he looked her up and down carefully, eyes concerned, and she cursed her uncontrollable reaction to the photo.

"Yeah, fine. I've gotta go take a run down the mountain," she said, tone dismissive. She turned away from him but not back in the direction of the picture, avoiding getting caught in its spell once more, but a seed had planted itself within her in the long moments it had held her under its spell.

When Leverage, Inc. left the ski resort for Miami, they left it short one picture on its wall, not that anyone other the maid noticed.

Eliot knew something was bothering Parker, she had been distracted and jumpy and he knew that she was really unhappy about something, something that she hadn't talked to him about, but when she threw herself out of the second floor - even though he knew she could take the fall she hadn't jumped in a way that would actually allow her to absorb it, as though she was trying to hurt herself and it was only chance that he was there to catch her.

He finally managed to drag her into his office and push her into a seat - an act which only worked because she cooperated beyond a token resistance - then crouched down in front of her and looked up into her face, a position that he had discovered was a good place to talk to her from since it didn't put her wolf's back up, since he wasn't posturing over her but accepting her as physically dominant.

"What's goin' on with you, Pandora?" he demanded, his tone firm for all his posture was submissive, deliberately using her full, real name to hopefully force a confession. "What's got you so upset?"

The blond stared down at him in silence for several moments, then a hand went to the zip of her hoody. She slid it down, and a slipped inside to emerge from the inner pocket with a slightly creased photograph. She held it down for him and he looked at it without comprehension.

"What'm I lookin' at, ladybug?" he asked, curious.

A slightly bitter smile quirked the corners of her mouth, and one finger trailed down from the edge of the photo to rest on a pretty honey blonde girl who was turned slightly towards the young man beside her, eyes bright, clearly caught on the edge of a laugh.

"There," the word was barely a whisper. Her finger rested on the girl's hair, just above the nape of the neck, and Eliot's agile mind made the connection easily. He could just make out a sharp, dark line, and his eyes flew to Parker's.

Parker nodded at him without speaking, her eyes filled with pain but dry of tears.

"Oh, darlin'," Eliot whispered, moving now to sit beside her and pulling her against him.

"I...I can't even tell who it is," she buried her face against his neck. "I don't know who else actually got out, we all split up, it could be any of them! I thought...I wanted to see them, but...this is worse!"

"Is it really?" asked Eliot quietly, a few moments later. "I mean, think about it. You didn't know who else made it. You didn't know that ANYONE else made it. Now you do; you know that at least one of your sisters if free. You don't know where she is, but you can see in the picture that she is happy. Is that really worse?"

Parker thought for a long moment, curling in against him even as she carefully kept the photo flat, not allowing her hand to crinkle it up.

"You're right. I just wish...and I can't even put the photo in a computer and try and identify her, it would be too dangerous, for both of us."

Eliot just nodded, smiling sadly. "I won't say I really understand, because there's no way I can, but I can imagine, I think," he said softly. "I wish it was different, Pan, really I do."

"I know," Parker whispered, snuggling up against him and allowing his arms to hold her more securely. "Thank you for that."

They sat for a while, then Eliot let her pull herself up and watched as she tucked the photo away.

"Parker." His tone froze her in place. "No more jumping out of windows when you don't know someone's there," he ordered, his tone hard as rock.

She just looked at him, her expression sober, and nodded. He watched her for a second, then nodded in return and watched silently as she exited the room.


End file.
